"Thank you, music lovers," Spike Jones would
shout during his weekly salutations. Spike Jones, son of
a railroad agent, was born Lindley Armstrong Jones, getting
his nickname from a telegraph operator who thought that
Jones was skinny as a railroad spike. Ever since he was
a child, Spike had an affinity for music, playing the drums
at an early age, and organizing groups as a teenager. Jones
was one of those people that slogged in anonymity for a
decade and then became an overnight smash success.

After fooling around as a background player for five years,
Jones became bored. His only escape was a part-time band
of ragtag players that he, and his friend Del Porter, scrounged
up. After a few gigs in Los Angeles, the band started to
get quite a faithful following. By 1941, the band, Spike
Jones and his City Slickers, already cut five bluebird
records, but their major success came when Spike went into
the studio to record an amusing anti-Nazi war ditty, Der
Fuehrer's Face. The song was originally intended for
Walt Disney's cartoon, Donald Duck in Axis Land.
It was only a month and Spike Jones and his merry crew rocketed
to national stardom. What about Hitler's
claims to genetic superiority? HAH! Single-handedly, Spike
Jones made a mockery of Hitler's declarations, and the raspberry
became a respectable part of American Radio.

As Spike Jones and his City Slickers' fame grew, so did
the band. From its meager start of about 7 members, by the
pinnacle of their careers, the band consisted of 16 players,
one actually playing an assortment of made-up instruments
like the "birdaphone" or the "latrinophone,"
which was a toilet seat with strings!

It was in 1945 that Spike got his own show, The Spike
Jones Show. His show consisted of pure, and fun, musical
MADNESS! Spike Jones and is City Slickers turned foghorns,
kitchen utensils, cowbells, and anything else that they
could carry a tune, into musical instruments! The show would
start with a special guest arrival, such as Gene Kelly, Dinah Shore, Peter
Lorre, and Frank Sinatra. Then the show would kick into
musical insanity mode, mainly throughout the duration of
the show.

This collection includes The Spike Jones Show, some of his musical "masterpieces" as well as his guest appearances on Bing Crosby, Bill Stern, Command Performance, and others. So, get out your slide whistle and come join in on the MADNESS!